In this compulsively readable collection of trivia, New York Times "Vital Signs" columnist Nicholas Bakalar spoons out the things you never realized you really want to know about your body and your health. In his literary cabinet he has medical firsts (in 1667, the first survivor of a blood transfusion received sheep's blood) and medical onlys (rabies is the only infectious disease that is 100 percent curable when treated and 100 percent fatal if not). He takes a tour of diseases that belong in horror movies, from liquefying organs and flesh-eating bacteria to mushrooms sprouting in the throat. And he notes remarkable remedies, such as dark chocolate, which can stand in for blood-pressure pills. Bakalar tickles the curiosity of both the healthy and the hypochondriac, following Voltaire's dictum that "the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."